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The Awakening

THE AWAKENING.Kate Chopin was born in 1850 in St Louis, from an irish catholic father and a french creole mother and died in 1904. This half of century covers one of the most crucial periods in the history of the South America. The move from Antebellum (av. Guerre) society to a post-reconstruction south (12 years after the ‘Civil War’, from 1865 to 1877 . Note : The North won). The south lives this defeat like an invasion, a form of slavery. The South values : antislavery, large plantations, aristocratic way of life, the ideal of the Southern “belle” (chaste). The south tried to redefine itself and to recover from the trauma of the Civil War. Important landmark : Rise of Abolitionism, Civil War –(61-65), Reconstruction. * “It bled the south dry” – Ont laissé le sud exague. Southern people were at loss to redefine themselves, to find their places in the US Society dominated by Northern values, bondage (servitude). The theme of women’s bondage is omnipresent in Chopin’s fiction. For instance, with the parrot in cell : Edna, part of a world that’s still looking for his own identity. A very instable world. She’s struggling to find a place for herself in this society after throwing off the yawk of slavery. * The guilded age : of railroad barons, of entrepreneurs, economic speculation. Also known as Gold age because the main standard was gold. Chopin’s values were at variance (aller à l’encontre) with those of the GA. What mattered at that time was speed (Train), financial push. Social ambitions, represented with Léonce Pontellier. Léonce is the representation of the Guilded Age, he is obsessed with making money, accumulating riches, keeping in touch with important people, high society, who could be useful to him. He’s constantly saving appearances, for instance when Edna leaves the home, he only thinks about neighbor’s opinion. He puts up a notice in the paper to announce that his house is being redecorated. * The Women’s movement: wrote the book at the time when the Women’s movement had gained huge momentum (élan) in American Society. The fight for emancipation emerged in the North East, closely linked with the anti-slavery movement (clashed with Southern values). “White women and the ideal they have been associated with stood as a bulwark (rampart) against social and racial chaos.”It was very important that women should perpetuate this ideal image of the “angel in the house”. Otherwise, all of the Southern values would collapse. Close link between Gender relation. Chopin on Black People : in her other short stories, KC was the first American women author to describe a black man as beautiful. Other Louisiana writers wrote about happy slaves only. She broached (aborder) other more dary subjects, like friendship between white and black people, black man helping a white woman escaping a brutal husband. She crossed the “color line” : she saw black people as individuals( Désirées’ Baby) Theme : Misgeneration = Mix of the races. Decade 1890 : tremendous changes. Impact of the works of Darwin, Spencer and Huxley. Theory of Evolution. Fought to make themselves heard. 1890 : Elizabeth Star* gaved a speech entitled Solitude of Self. “ The isolution of every human should and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.” = Edna’s credo. Female passion : considered as immoral and unhealthy. People were scandalized by the first long embrace in a film. “ The John-Rice-May Irwin kiss 1856”. Some widows or divorced women could be found at that time, but their salvation was ensured by a second marriage. Kate O’Flaherty’s Education :

* A woman’s world, with no men. Her father died when she was 5. Her maternal grandmother, Victoire Charleville, lived with the family until her death in 1863 when Kate was 13. It took her great pride in teaching little Kate (how to be self-reliant). She insisted that Kate speak French to her, she also gave her piano lessons. Another figure, her...

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In her novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin depicts a woman much like herself. In the novel, the reader finds Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother who, like Chopin, struggles with her role in society. The Victorian era woman was expected to fill a domestic role. This role requires them to provide their husbands with a clean home, food on the table and to raise their children. They were pieces of property to their husbands, who cared more about their wives’ appearance than their feelings. Edna initially attempts to conform to these roles, her eyes are gradually opened to possibilities of liberation. Throughout the novel, many aspects to Edna’s awakening are revealed. Edna’s emotional awakening and change in perspective on romance lead to Edna’s final awakening and her death.
Edna begins an emotional awakening when she hears Mademoiselle Reisz play the piano. Edna was, “very fond of music” and musical renditions, sometimes, “evoked pictures in her mind.” Hearing Adele Ratignolle play, Edna’s imagines a “figure of a man.” His countenance was one of “hopeless resignation.” Here the music internally affects Edna only with feelings of loneliness. Also, Edna pictures a man instead of a woman, which might suggest that early in the novel, Edna’s life is controlled by men. This control effects even her inner thoughts and emotions. Comparatively, when Mademoiselle Reisz plays the first chord a “keen tremor”...

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Anais Nin, a French-Cuban author and activist, once asked a liberating question concerning the feminine role of society: “How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than create it herself?” Nin supplements a good portion of thematic endurance for which arises in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening,” illustrating the prevalent subsidy of individualism over traditional standards. Although such context as individuality spurs itself among the highest motifs of classic literature, society’s portrayal of impeding tolerance within “The Awakening,” reflected by that of Edna and Robert, accumulates through the themes of independence, identity and the disillusion of affection. These fractions of significant ideas utilize the overall negativity of suppression versus expression, a statement in which Enda endures through death and circumvent self-knowledge.
In “The Awakening,” marriage acts as a suppressive barrier to happiness and individual fulfillment, conducted in Victorian society by the barely conscious habits of acquiescing to a husband’s orders. Edna Pontellier portrays the disillusionment of the institution of marriage; however, annul toward the dynamic. Between herself and Robert, the man she shows much passion for among the jest of their communities and Edna’s infatuations that culminate in her emotions with...

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To start things off, it is unmistakable that Edna was not a conventional woman. Even from early on in the novel, Chopin clearly states that “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother woman.” Mother women were abundant at Grand Isle and were described as women who idolized their children and worshipped their husbands. One of the mother women, Adele Ratagnolle, was the epitome of the term and served as the foil to Edna. Adele was described as “the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm whereas Edna was “rather handsome than beautiful.” By introducing Madam Ratagnolle, Chopin successfully emphasizes the contrast between Edna and the ideal of a perfect woman at the time.
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...J.D.E.M.1
José David Estudillo Molina.
Dra. Silvia Castro Borrego.
North-American Literature IV.
20 January 2013.
Self-Awareness and Its Consequences: The Awakening.
The notions of what it is to be a ‘proper’ woman have been traditionally attached to the domestic sphere whereas those of men have been attached to politics, economics and commerce. The ‘ideal’ woman has often been described as an angel, a beautiful but weak ‘thing’. All these notions are encompassed under what is known as the ‘Cult of True Womanhood. A term defined by Barbara Welter in her essay (“The Cult of True Womanhood: p.1820–1860"); according to her, a true women must possess four virtues: Piety, purity, submission, domesticity.
This inherited perception of the women’s role in society serves as background to Kate Chopin’s the Awakening’. In this novel, there is a clash between conventions, social codes of behavior in relation to roles in society based in gender distinctions. Women in this novel are represented as Birds whose wings must serve to protect and bring joy to their houses; two birds are presented at the beginning of the story: the parrot and the mockingbird. Both are caged, or in other words, both are restricted by society’s conventions. They represent two very different polarities or sides. In the one hand, the parrot is praised by its beauty and the mockingbird is praised by its musical abilities. The first represents Edna and the second...

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The novel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, was written in the late nineteenth century in St. Louis after her husband Oscar died of a severe illness. Her book appeared in 1899, after she was idolized by many novels written by Darwin and Sarah Orne Jewett. Her first attempts at writing were just brief sketches for a local newspaper that was only short descriptions of her life in Louisiana. However, Chopin's interests had always run along more risky lines, as reflected in her diaries, letters, and fictions. Her most common subject was female subjugation and freedom. When The Awakening appeared, Chopin was severely criticized for depicting a sexualized and independent-thinking woman who questioned her role within the southern patriarchy. The disapproval surprised Chopin, and she never quite recovered her faith in her own work.
There were many themes discussed throughout The Awakening, many of which are very important to the concept of the novel. The main theme is the awakening from the slumber of patriarchal social convention. Edna who is the main character pronounced in the novel, must rouse herself from the life of dullness that she had always lived. What she awakens to, however, is so much larger than herself that she ultimately cannot manage the complexity of it. Edna awakens to the concept of self-discovery and must live to embrace it. This theme is deeper than the obvious...